We need to talk about ribs

Ribs. Get them wrong, and they can be one big chewy, sinewy, stick-in-your-teethy regret.

Get them right, and it’s a massively different story – a delicious tale of tender meat married to the core with flavour, dripping with seasoning-infused juices as it gracefully departs from the bone into your savouring mouth.

Phew. Talk about word porn. That’s got us all hot under the collar for BBQ. Thank goodness that’s the kind of rib experience available in our kitchen.

But before we go all dizzy with carnivore fever, let’s get to grips with this meaty phenomenon.

What even is BBQ?

These days, when you think of BBQ, you think of some big burly American dude who doesn’t leave his house without an axe at the ready.

Yeah, kinda like that guy. And you wouldn’t be that wrong. But believe it or not, BBQ has Caribbean origins, as explorer Christopher Columbus first observed natives of the island Hispaniola cooking meat directly over the heat of a flame.

Columbus and his Spanish cronies liked the idea, and used it when they arrived in America. The rest is juicy, meaty, flame-grilled history.

All hail the pig

A lot of patriotic BBQ lovin’ Americans will tell you that it ain’t BBQ unless it’s made out of pig. There’s a good reason for this, and it’s not just because it tastes awesome.

When BBQ first took off in the early days of America, pig was pretty cheap to farm, as you could literally let the pigs loose in a forest and they’d fend for themselves.

Essentially, that’s free-range bacon that farms itself. Awesome right? BBQ pork was so cheap, nutritious and delicious that it basically founded America.